


In a Week

by CucumbersInGold



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Based off of "In a Week" by Hozier, Discrimination, Gore, Homophobia, M/M, Please read the tags!!!, like i cried three times writing it, really sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:14:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CucumbersInGold/pseuds/CucumbersInGold
Summary: Tony and Stephen decided to pack up and move out to a little town in the middle of nowhere. The townspeople don't take too kindly to it.





	In a Week

**Author's Note:**

> Please be warned that this is a very distressing topic for some. I was raised in a homophobic household and, being bisexual myself, this was a sort of cathartic release/meditation piece for me. I've met people like this, and people like the townspeople in this story exist. That makes it all the more powerful when we continue to create works that celebrate LGBTQ+ people, and it makes our existence all the more powerful. Again, this is a somber, sad piece. But it's a part of my heart, and I'm sharing it with you.

In their sleepy little town, high in the mountains, nestled in a verdant valley and filled to bursting with farms and fields, people didn’t go missing. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, and nothing managed to stay secret for long. Sure, the townspeople shook their heads and quoted the Bible whenever the vile talk of black gossip seeped into everyday conversation about crops and harvests, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t gather what they could from the little rumors before they squashed them where they stood.

Word moved fast, and anything new or out of the ordinary was run through the mouths of every single person that picked it up along the way like an old cassette tape. “Oh, did you hear about so and so, they just bought the farm up the road”, or, “how about Miss such and such? What a fit she threw this year after Mr. such and such did this that or the other”.

For a time, the gossip narrowed down to one thing: the arrival of Mr. and Mr. (“Yes, Eileen, you heard that right, two misters”) Stark-Strange.

The new gay couple up the road - for that’s what they were, far away from town, they knew better than to stray too close to the normal folk - was the talk of the town for months on end. Every time they came to the market, or decided to stroll down the main street holding one another’s hands (no decency with those people, no decency at all), every simple exchange of greetings was cut low by hidden meanings so deep that they had to have been carved in the townspeople’s very bones.

Stephen and Tony, for their part, heard the whispers. They saw the hands and mouths muddied and mangled with rumor and secrets, they saw the glint in the eyes of the old woman that lived on the edge of town when they wandered too close to her fence line. They could smell it in the air, sometimes - when they arrived at town functions, Stephen swore that it coated his tongue like heavy incense. The hatred, the distrust.

Many a night passed in which Stephen asked Tony what they were doing all the way out here. They’d be laid up in bed together, or on their sofa in front of their hearth, exchanging quiet conversation until Stephen brought up his fears again.

“I grew up in a rural town, Tony, I know what these people are like. I know we wanted to - start a farm, live all the way out here - “

Tony would laugh and roll his eyes, his hands scraping dull nails against Stephen’s scalp. “Babe, you’re letting these creepy podunk folk get to you. Nothing is going to happen to us, okay? We’re all the way out here, and we’ve got the dogs, and all that land between the edge of our property and this house. I swear to you that we are perfectly safe. This was a good decision for us. I love it out here. Just relax.”

And Stephen would listen. He’d be pacified until the next overheard unkind word, the next glare, the next stain of a whisper smeared against the corner of someone’s mouth. He’d set it aside, and he’d move on.

People didn’t go missing in this town.

Until Tony did.

———————————

“Hello, yes, this is - Stephen Stark-Strange, just up the road? Yeah, I’m calling again because - well, you told me to call after forty-eight hours… He doesn’t know anyone in town, he isn’t with friends. Please, I’m begging you - I just want - if I have to come down there again, I’m - hello? Hello?”

Stephen slammed the old phone down as hard as he could, the ringing of the bell inside the plastic casing the only sound echoing throughout the farmhouse he and Tony had fixed up when they finally moved out here. Tony had been gone for nearly two and a half days. Stephen had begun to panic after two in the morning the day before, but the police had told him off for calling so soon. He had to wait.

And he’d waited.

And they refused to look for him.

He glanced at the clock on the wall, taking a moment to even out his breathing and focus on the positioning of the hands - just before nine. He could be to town by twenty past, and he could start asking questions.

He pulled on his coat, hesitating before grabbing the mace he started carrying with him to town (“Honey, we’re not living in Deliverance. Take it easy”) and jumping into the cab of the old blue Ford that Tony had been treating as his little pet project. After a little grumble, it jolted to life, and Stephen put shaking hands to the wheel, breathing deeply again.

He didn’t drive. Not since his accident. His eyes locked on to the spidery scars running up and down his fingers, his knuckles white with terror against the worn leather of the steering wheel.

“For Tony,” he reminded himself hoarsely, “for Tony.”

He put the truck in gear and started on the main road into town. He had questions, and he was going to get some answers.

———————————

Every single door was slammed in his face. As soon as the people behind it registered who he was, they clammed up, and their house followed suit. Lights went off as he walked down the road - neighbors calling neighbors to let them know that one of the misters was coming a-calling, and they’d best pretend to be asleep or away. Eventually, Stephen came to the line in the sand he’d drawn for himself at the very end of town. Just beyond it was another farm - the Andersons lived there.

He and Tony had met the Andersons not soon after they’d settled in. They’d thrown red paint all over the side of their house, marring the fresh white paint job they’d spent the entire weekend finishing. The Andersons had then unabashedly carried empty red paint buckets in the back of their truck for at least two weeks - a badge of honor. They’d done what no one else had the courage to do.

Stephen didn’t cross the line. If Tony was still out there, it would do no good to get himself killed for knocking on the wrong door. He tried phoning the police one more time, and then gave up for the night. He curled up in their bed, alone again, clutching Tony’s pillow to his chest as the panic began to settle in.

Where was his husband? Where was the love of his life? Hadn’t he told him? Hadn’t he warned him over and over to stay away from the bar, to stay away from the market after sundown, to ask Stephen to come along to get something he needed? And now Tony was gone, and no one was willing to help Stephen look.

Everyone’s mouths were smeared with black. But the rumor mill had run dry.

———————————

In his sleep that night, Stephen dreamed.

He was out in a field, early in the morning. It was bright - the grass was greener than he ever remembered it being, the sky a vibrant blue. Birds sang, insects buzzed, and Stephen walked through the waist-high grass, feeling it spring beneath his feet as it kissed his trembling fingertips with dew. He didn’t know where he was going, really - but his feet carried him forward. Towards an end. Towards something.

Or someone.

“Tony!”

Tony was standing at the tree line, just at the edge of the field. He turned at the sound of Stephen’s voice, smiling like he had on the day they’d become two halves of the same whole. He was dressed in white - the clothes were loose and linen, catching every whisper of the gentle breeze that surrounded the two of them. It smelled like Tony’s cologne, and their first apartment, and wine corks, and the sleep-sweat that sometimes lingered on their sheets.

Stephen felt a terrible knowledge settle deep in his heart. He shook his head, tears coming to his eyes. “No. Tony, no.”

Tony put his hands out, but he didn’t tread any further into the grass. He stayed where he was. He waited.

Stephen crossed to him, laying his hands in Tony’s upturned palms. “Please. Please tell me you’re still here.”

Tony’s smile didn’t falter. He leaned forward, pressing his lips to the center of Stephen’s forehead, his facial hair scratching against his husband’s skin. “Baby. I’ve never known peace like this. Or sleep. Or beauty. Steph, it’s so pretty here. Look around,” he whispered, squeezing Stephen’s wrists in his grip. “Look at this place.”

“Tony,” Stephen sobbed, his tears spilling down his cheeks. “Tony, I can’t - I can’t be alone here, I can’t. You can’t be - “

“Hey, hey, waterworks,” Tony cooed, thumbing Stephen’s tears away. “What’re you crying for? Honey, I’m safe. I’m sleeping, now. No more bad dreams. No more pain. Just sleeping.”

Stephen shook his head, his voice trapped in his throat, trapped in the field with him as Tony took a step towards the trees. Stephen’s grip was too weak, though he struggled mightily with his broken, twisted hands to keep his husband where he stood. “Tony! Tony, don’t go! Please don’t go, I love you so much, please don’t leave me!”

Tony didn’t stop smiling. The weight of Stephen’s heart tripled as he crossed into the shadowy caress of the trees. “I love you, Steph. I’m gonna go back to sleep, now. I’ll see you soon, gorgeous.”

Stephen screamed, unable to help himself. Pain twisted hot and white in his gut as Tony turned and disappeared into the woods just beyond, just out of his reach. Stephen fell to his knees, the grass choking him, the colors fading.

He woke with a start, his throat filled with bile, a shout caught between his teeth.

He knew Tony was dead.

———————————

The town stayed mum for at least a week. Stephen barely ate, barely slept. He came into town only once after his first excursion, and that was to visit the police station. He got down on his knees and begged the chief to send officers out asking questions. He was escorted out - Tony Stark was a known alcoholic. He’d probably just wandered off somewhere. They had more important things to tend to.

By the following week, things began to ramp back up again. Tony was forgotten by the townsfolk - good riddance, some of them sniffed. “Not unlike those sorts of people,” they’d say, or, “The town’s a better place with just one of them, I should think”.

Stephen had come back into town the day that the Anderson’s cows began to get restless. They’d gathered at the edge of the property, stamping and lowing and jostling one another. They’d found something, and it was putting them off.

“Probably a deer,” murmured some. “Maybe a vagrant from another town.”

Stephen followed some of the men out to the edge of the field to check, surprised to see the Andersons staying firmly on their porch as nearly half the entire town turned out onto their property. Why weren’t they joining in? Why weren’t they saying anything? Stephen felt their eyes on his back as he stepped through the fence, stopping at the tree line.

And there he was.

It was almost as if he was sleeping. The grass caressed his body ever so gently, like the cradle of a mother’s arms. He was wearing the clothes that he’d been the day he went missing - beside him was an empty glass pie dish, whatever had been baked in there long gone, the scraps eaten up by the insects and animals that browsed along the edge of the woods.

Stephen remembered Tony making a pie after he’d picked the blackberries growing behind their fence, his eyes shining like a child’s when he’d come back inside. “Look, babe. It’s summer.”

A trickle of dried blood ran from his nose and the side of his mouth. Two gaping shotgun wounds stood rotted and ragged in his chest. But to Stephen, Tony was sleeping. He had to be sleeping.

Stephen lost sight of everyone else as the world narrowed to Tony’s peaceful, sleeping face. He let out a sound that most people never live to hear in their lives. His mouth opened, and out came his soul. He wailed and keened as he knelt beside his husband’s cold, decaying corpse. His voice was raw and unchecked, and hot tears spilled down his cheeks as his pain spilled forth from every pore. His cup runneth over. His cup always full.

Stephen shrieked like a dying animal. He screamed, feral and hurt. He gnashed his teeth, and tore at his hair, his fingers aching, his hands burning as anguish swept through him, burrowing into his soul and turning his heart to black.

The cows shifted and groaned, Stephen’s sound too like an animal for their tastes. The townspeople offered no comfort. This was their place, and Tony and Stephen had dared to trespass. This is what happened to those who came where they weren’t wanted. One by one, they turned their backs and left Stephen where he was. The Andersons watched from their porch, unmoved.

He’d lost everything. Stephen had lost everything, and it only took a week.

A week. They’d found him in a week. Here, in the peaceful place, where he’d told Stephen he’d be.

He was just sleeping.

Tony had to be sleeping.


End file.
